


only love is all maroon

by satellites (brella)



Category: Young Justice (Cartoon)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-25
Updated: 2012-12-25
Packaged: 2017-11-22 10:31:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,304
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/608866
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brella/pseuds/satellites
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>La’gaan has never been entirely sure where he belongs, but M’gann’s arms sure do feel like home when he closes his eyes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	only love is all maroon

**Author's Note:**

> Bon Iver, apparently, equals La'gaan in my mind.

The first thing La’gaan remembers, the first memory that has ever nudged at the back of his head, is the sound of water shifting around him. Even as an infant, he had known, intuitively, that it was blue, and that it was everywhere. He had known that the seaweed swayed and he had known that the fish swam too quickly to be touched, even fleetly. He had known of the beauty, and the death, and he had opened the bulbous red eyes that he would grow to hate and he had seen the sun shattering through the surface miles and miles above. 

He remembers his first breath coursing through him, a typhoon. He remembers a hand holding his. He remembers shuddering, and moving, and _being alive_ , every tendon and ventricle _his_.

And then he remembers the mirror. He remembers the uncanny emptiness in his eyes, the pale green of his skin, the scales and the slime and the black stripes like paint across his back. He remembers being afraid of himself, leaping back, until his mother told him that it was not a monster – it was his own reflection.

He remembers not believing it, for a while. He remembers trailing after Kaldur’ahm and Garth and Tula, his feet kicking fluidly (fluently) at the water behind him, gazing upon their every movement and word with admiration and glee and envy.

“I wish I was like you,” he had said, so small and young and angry at his very hands.

Kaldur had put four webbed fingers over La’gaan’s slight shoulder and smiled, his eyes crinkling at the edges, the expression such a warming change to his normally stoic expression.

“You are,” he had told him, in Atlantean so elegant that it had filled La’gaan with wistfulness (for his was rough around the edges, and brash and impatient, no time for the intricate syllables and the clicking).

“But I am not!” he had insisted, gesturing to his spiky limbs and the black mane of a fin at his neck. “I am a _creature_ , not a—”

“We are all creatures, though, are we not?” Tula had chimed in, floating gently forward, her hair much longer and trailing at her back in shifting, glimmering red. “We all must coexist here. We are friends, and we are equals.”

“Tell that to Queen Mera during sorcery class,” Garth had quipped under his breath, and Tula had elbowed him.

“I am your friend?” La’gaan had breathed, permitting himself a rampant smile (all teeth).

Kaldur had laughed, but it was not condescending; it made the water shiver around him as though it had been tickled.

“Yes, and a dear one,” he had assured him, patting him once more on the shoulder. “We must return to our studies now, La’gaan.”

“Okay,” La’gaan had said, and he had followed along among them anyway.

▲

La’gaan enjoys the sun. Though he had been birthed in the dimness and the serenity of the sea, he had seen it as a tomb, a darkness that had shadowed his most shameful parts, and so when he can step into the sun on the Surface and feel the rays smile upon his every pore, he feels proud of himself, just for precious moments in the afternoon when the seagulls pass by the top of Mount Justice.

He breathes it in and it tastes salty, buttery, all of the good and golden things he wants to swallow down and keep with him. He stands on the beach with the water to his ankles and steps no closer to the depths, and he closes his eyes and waits for the sunlight to stream all the way through him until there is nothing left of him to fear.

▲

To silence his inhibitions when he joins the Team, La’gaan teaches himself to be loud. He teaches himself to laugh and love and all the stupid things he sees on the inspirational posters at every girly store he passes (at night, when no one is out to scream when they see him). He teaches himself to pretend that he thinks himself a champion, but inside he recoils at the sight of himself so he hides every mirror in the Cave at the bottom of the swimming pool.

Robin (the new one, the alive one) is blamed. Nightwing had assumed that “trolling” ran in the family, but La’gaan can tell when M’gann (beautiful, brilliant M’gann, a supernova he can never touch) glances aside at him that he’s not as subtle as he thought.

 _You’re fine, you know_. He gasps at the echo of her voice in the back of his skull.

 _They can hear you_ , he thinks back a notch too loudly.

 _No_ , she replies crisply (it nips at his temples). _This is just us. But Lagoon Boy – don’t beat yourself up. You look fine._

 _Is that so, Angelfish?_ He smirks and M’gann cocks an eyebrow without blinking.

 _How many girls have you used **that** one on?_ she thinks dryly, clearly unimpressed.

 _One_ , he lets out before he can stop himself, and after that M’gann goes silent (but he can see a smile, soft and tender and demure, like the sunrise).

▲

_You are beautiful_ , he thinks when he knows she isn’t listening. _You are beautiful, and incredible, and I do not ever want you to cry, because you are beautiful, and you deserve happiness._

Conner breaks up with her and her tears are damp for days. He hears her sobbing behind the locked door of her quarters when he walks by. She does not come out until the weekend, and when she does, she is different. She is hardened at the edges like steel and it makes his stomach drop.

 _Angelfish_ , he thinks to her when she passes by him, her short hair cropped close at her face.

 _Don’t call me that anymore_ , she shoots back so sharply it almost makes him stumble. _It’s unprofessional, rookie_.

 _Some people just can’t take a compliment_ , he retorts, but in the very pit of his chest, something has cracked in two.

▲

He has never been entirely sure of where he belongs. He is not entirely of Atlantis, a land of quiet and peace and shifting waters that carry him to places he cannot fathom; but he is not of the Surface, either, where everything is implicit and inside-out and bright (no longer sunny, not since M’gann stopped smiling).

But M’gann’s arms do feel like home when he closes his eyes.

He kisses her after pushing one of her tears away with the hands he never looks at. Her mouth is soft, and it barely opens, and he wonders if he will always be second to her, wonders if he will always be her consolation prize.

 _Don’t think that_. Her mental tones are clear in his mind and they ripple and he hadn’t even realized that he’d been dwelling on his fears. _La’gaan, you aren’t consoling me._

 _Oh_ , he thinks. _I’m sorry; I – am I making it worse?_

 _Please_ , she thinks, and it laps at him like the tide. She has drawn closer, her eyelids low, her thick eyelashes hooding her amber irises, her lower lip swollen from being chewed with nervousness. _Please don’t stop kissing me._

He doesn’t.

 _Don’t be afraid of yourself anymore_ , M’gann’s mind murmurs, pressed to his, flush and expectant. _Ve’nass t’i le’gnim, resh n’gass._

He doesn’t understand the words themselves, but their meaning sinks into his ribs and his stomach and his heart, and it beats, and he closes his eyes to her touch.

Her fingers stroke every fin and scale and he has never felt so warm, so filled to the brim that he could burst and ebb, all within her verdant hands, open at the palms for every piece of him that he is willing to give her.

And he will give her everything.  


End file.
